why do I find numbers such a difficult language?

My GED testing dates are coming up, July 9/10. I am, in a word, anxious. I’ve been dutifully reading the numbers manual Becca loaned me, learning more about fractions and polynomials than ever before, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to bomb the math test. I’ve taken example tests for all the subjects and it’s the only topic I’m not getting 90% on.

the usual kind of drink

barbra

producing sounds like Stephen King’s nervous system caught in a mousetrap.


The line broke, the monkey got choked, they all went to heaven in a little row boat, clap back.

I recieved a letter of “immediate termination” today. Not unexpected. They had been vague about my schedules and their phonecalls were increasingly paranoid and contradictory. I have a job interview with Telus tomorrow. I did a test for them today, scantron style, all tiny little ovals that you fill in with pencil. I’d forgotten the sound a pencil makes on paper, the little swish sound as it softly grinds itself into the paper like a subtle dancehall pick-up, how the scrape of it travels up your hand and tunnels into the fingertips. There was the same personality test that I had to fill out every year of high-school. More True/Less True. Chopstick marks, one after another. Question one, old houses, familiar territory, question two. IQ measured in how well I process a pattern in a row of shapes. Personality measured in yes/no questions.

 The First Rocket Launch from Cape Canaveral

I did well. I always do well with those. It’s in the taste of them, how fast I read. Print chewed up faster than waking up in the morning. Twenty minutes and mine is done. The expected smiles of surprise on the other side of the door. “You’re finished?” “Yes.” Blue carpet, blue walls. The walk to the skytrain is nice, under trees. I wonder if I’ll ever be homesick for these clouds and think no. I walk through the Central Park playground that was one of my only memories of Vancouver as a kid. The signs are dirty now and the little train doesn’t run. Half of it is torn up, under reconstruction. The water fight fountains are gone. It all feels appropriate and meaningless, all at once, like a pop song resonating to a false mirror flare of nostalgia frequency or a boring music video.

breeding like Starbucks.